Harold Brodkey's Printout

Published: July 18, 1993

To the Editor:

In "Floppy Disks Are Only Knowledge, but Manuscripts Are Wisdom" (March 28) Jodi Daynard refers to the "manuscript" (her quotation marks) of Harold Brodkey's novel "The Runaway Soul." Her description of this manuscript has unfortunately given rise to the misinterpretation that what the Houghton Library has is simply a computer printout of the text of Mr. Brodkey's novel.

That this is not true is immediately apparent to anyone who looks at the manuscript. While certainly Mr. Brodkey at various stages composed on his computer and printed out the text, these versions are densely overwritten, again and again, by hand. The result is a highly complex document in which one can observe the author at work firsthand. To my eye, it is certainly as evocative a document as those bearing the "impetuous scrawl" of Thomas Wolfe or the "jottings" of Herman Melville, which moved Ms. Daynard at the Houghton exhibition.

I was, on the whole, extremely pleased with the article. I do wish, however, that the nature of the working drafts of "The Runaway Soul" had been accurately represented. The description as printed had the unfortunate effect of devaluing a very interesting and important manuscript. LESLIE A. MORRIS Cambridge, Mass.